Monday, 13 June 2016

Rules for Success

Perhaps the only one that doesn't make immediate sense is no. 5; being a comedian, Louie challenges himself to throw out his best jokes and forces himself to start over. Applied to photography it would mean, whatever your fallback is, your go-to, your "usual tricks" in my teacher Frank DiPerna's words, throw those out from time to time and force yourself to...well, see no. 1, "Try new things."

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

My father was for many years a professor of English literature. When he started out he used to prepare lecture notes for his classes. And every time he taught the same class again he would throw them out and write new ones so his lectures never became rote and stale.

I assume you knew this, but Louis C.K. is an avid photographer and shoots with a Leica. Can't remember where he said this, but most everyone here can relate to it. "I'm not rich. I just spend all my money on cameras. It's important to me."

On A.D. Coleman's site, a recent article on Steve McCurry had the following story, which seems to be a Japanese version of Louis C.K.'s fascinatingly inscrutable rule number 5:

“To conclude, a word of advice to McCurry: Long ago, in a book whose title and author I can’t remember, I read that during the Edo period (1603-1868) Japanese woodblock artists would work for years perfecting a particular combination of technique and style that would make them famous. Then they would change not only the technique and style but also their names, starting again at the beginning.”